Athens Biennale 2015 – 2017 OMONOIA

OMONOIA resumes its activity

Bageion, Omonoia square, November 2015, Athens (videostill) © VICE: Thodoris Konstantinou, photography director | Ionas Katrakazos, drone operator | Tryfonas Karatzinas, montage.

Between May 25-31, the Athens Biennale 2015 – 2017 OMONOIA resumes its activity with the second, and final, opening of Synapse 2.
In this condensed 7-day event, AB5to6 continues with a series of talks and projects inspired by the OMONOIA curatorial framework.

Events

Begeion Ballroom, photo © Nyssos Vasilopoulos

The programme begins on Wednesday 25 May in Bageion with a lecture by international curator Vasif Kortun, who will talk about his experience in setting up and running SALT Istanbul, one of the most exciting cultural spaces in Turkey that brings together modern and contemporary art, archiving and research. Kortun was also the founding director of Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, Istanbul, which he initiated in 2001.
For more information on SALT, please click here.

On 27-28 May, the Athens Biennale is co-organising a symposium with the Onassis Cultural Centre, within the framework of the 3rd Fast Forward Festival. OMONOIA Programme Director Massimiliano Mollona will be co-curating the symposium with Katia Arfara, Concept and Artistic Director of the FFF. Art at the borders: spatial politics and post-colonial strategies in the Middle East will be a two-day event with artists' talks, screenings, keynote lectures and panels which will focus on the practices reflecting the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. The first day of the symposium will be held at the Upper Stage of the OCC and the second at Bageion.
For more information on the symposium, please click here.

Khaled Jarrar, Video still from Infiltrators, 2012 © Khaled Jarrar

The programme will continue with artist/architect Sofia Dona who will be holding an open presentation in Bageion on May 29. The project AKINITO is a research-based collaborative project on new models of co-habitation in the city of Athens. A working group of architects, lawyers, urban planners, economists and people that have already realised house projects will analyse previous experiences and processes, in order to create one or more possible new models of inhabitation in Athens.
For more information on Sofia Dona, please click here.

On May 30, internationally acclaimed, Chicago-based, artist Theaster Gates will be giving a performance lecture. Gates has developed an expanded practice that includes space development, object making, performance and critical engagement with various urban publics. He is the founder of the non-profit Rebuild Foundation, and is currently a Professor in the Department of Visual Art and the Director of Arts and Public Life at the University of Chicago. His lecture performance will revolve around the areas of gentrification and urbanism.
For more information on Theaster Gates, please click here.

Throughout the period of this second opening of Synapse 2, Oliver Ressler's new short film will be screening at the ground floor of Bageion. Emergency Turned Upside-Down confronts the cynical and inhumane discourse that calls refugees' presence in Europe an "emergency" when that word should be applied to the war, terror and economic strangulation that forced people to move. The film discusses borders performing their everyday function: managing, calibrating and governing global passages of people; dividing and "zoning" different types of migrants and non-migrants, who depend on the trickle of income squeezed from endless work.
For more information on Oliver Ressler, please click here.

Further, during the same period, Bageion residents continue their work with exhibitions, worksho ps and various artistic actions.

The programme of this final part of Synapse 2 will be complimented by Puerto Rico, a project that will be held in the new spaces opposite the Varvakios Market, given to the Athens Biennale 2015 – 2017 OMONOIA by the Municipal Council of Athens. Realised by artists Alexis Fidetzis, Panos Sklavenitis and Kostis Stafylakis, the project wishes to explore aspects of the (self)exoticisation of Greece through various representations of the country as quasi-Latin American. The project will consist of two parts. First, the opening of the Nick Boricua Museum, which will be dedicated to the emblematic figure of Nick Boricua, a Greek diplomat, intellectual and revolutionary and one of the leaders of the Grito de Lares revolution in Puerto Rico against the Spanish Empire. The Museum's opening will be followed by a Cabaret night wit h dance, food, performances, short speeches, music acts and Greek music.

Lastly, within the framework of Synapse 2, a number of artists commissioned to create art for the Biennale will be visiting Athens, including Dexter Sinister (David Reinfurt and Stuart Bailey) from New York and Wendelien van Oldenborgh from Rotterdam.